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Lumber Schooner C. A. THAYER

The Thayer is freshly positioned in the old seaplane hangar and the scaffolding is going up. For the next three years the hull would be encased in this wooden web. The scaffolding design was easily modified to meet the changing requirements as the job progressed. Note the distortion in the line of the keel. After the bulk of the outer planking had been removed the crew was able to settle this “hog” out of the keel.

Eighteen months into the job, the old rotten ribs, properly called “frames,” have been replaced, retaining only the sound lower sections. The hull planking is almost complete. Much of the bottom planking was in good enough condition to retain, having been protected from rot by years of soaking in salt water.

Planking stock ready to run into the ship saw. The outer planking was four inches thick, and up to twenty-four inches wide. A light plywood template, visible in the foreground here, was made up for each plank, and the shape transferred to the plank. The blade of the ship saw, a large band saw, could be tilted to adjust the bevel of the cut as the plank was pushed across the flat table.

Inside of the vessel the gang is installing drift bolts to fasten the thick ceiling planking. In a vessel like the Thayer, the inner ceiling planking is vital to the longitudinal stiffness of the hull. The upper ceiling planking is fully eight inches thick, and is fastened with heavy steel drift bolts, not only into the framing but through the edge of each plank into the plank below. This makes for an immensely strong structure inside the vessel, able to resist the tendency of these wide and shallow hulls to droop down in the ends.

Laying the main deck planking. The deck planks, seen here piled along the centerline, are four-inches square in section. Most of the planks are in lengths of forty feet. The planking is fastened with square-section galvanized steel spikes, countersunk into the plank and covered with a wooden bung.

Here the main deck planking is complete. Each seam has been caulked, using a single strand of cotton and several strands of oakum. Oakum is a material like strands of old rope, soaked in pine tar. The seams are finished off with “marine glue,” a thick pine tar that dries hard in the seams. The glue is heated before being poured or “paid” into the seams. The deck seams are waiting for a final scraping to remove the excess marine glue. Forward, the beams of the raised fo’c’s’le deck are being installed. The bulwark cap timber has not yet been installed on top of the bulwark stanchions and inwale.

Here the last of the scaffolding is coming down, and the Thayer has emerged, like a butterfly from a cocoon, into full visibility. The topside and bottom planking was painted by hand, to avoid an inappropriate sprayed finish on the hull. The fancy carved “gammoning knee” has not been installed. This piece of finish, the upper timber of the stem which will give her that classic “clipper bow” effect, is among the jobs that will be completed with the vessel back at Hyde Street Pier.